(child soldiers friendly fire)
2020
spray paint, watercolour, oil and resin on masonite
90x 120cm
P.O.A
Tasting Notes
At Christmas I stayed with my father’s brother.
My aunt taught me to paint with watercolour.
We sat quietly together on the deck, on the south coast of new south wales and painted bright colours that bled, under a sky chocking black with smoke from the devastating bushfires.
There is a beautiful shared moment of intimacy when sharing a smoke with someone.
Here in this painting, I tried to capture that with the image of two child soldiers sharing a light for their cigarettes.
Death Of Socrates
part three
2020
mixed media; woodstain, spraypaint, metallic tint, oil paint, smoke stain and resin on FSC plywood (Forest Stewardship Council)
95x 120cm
P.O.A
Tasting Notes;
Socrates is to thinking what Ice Berg Slim is to pimping, before stoicism was even a tickle in a Roman testicle, Socrates was dropping wisdom that would go on to be the foundational approach for cooperative argumentative dialogue, ‘the socratic method’ that is the basis of inquiry for medicine, science and critical thinking to this day. He was the teacher of Plato and really is the O.G of western philosophy
Death of Socrates is a ‘neoclassical painting’ from just after the French Revolution, championing the godfather of philosophy’s death as an example of resisting unjust authority.
Story goes that Socrates is sentenced to death, for corrupting the youth and not acknowledging the gods… rather than backing down and renouncing his beliefs, he tells them to get fucked… the consequent charge being to drink lethal poison, hemlock.
I appropriated the central character in this painting from the classic painting, alongside Elon Musk in a ‘2001; Space Odyssey’ jumpsuit and Patsy, swigging from the bottle while handing a hemlock martini to Socrates.
The working title of this work was ‘Armageddon fancy dress party’. Socrates had reservations about democracy, because of the need for all the citizens to have an adequate education to make informed decisions. I find this fascinating, as a concept, especially so when comparing the environmental crisis of our modern world, the modes of information transferal and the mechanisms of influence and bias, I fear without ‘Socratic Reasoning’ we may all meet the fate of its namesake.
The Sea Will Change
2021
mixed media paint and resin on repurposed realestate advertising board.
60x 60cm
P.O.A
Tasting Notes
“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.”
Robert M. Pirsig,
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Sugar Pop Sex Myth in Panopticon
2021
mixed media; woodstain, spraypaint, metallic tint, oil paint, smoke stain and resin on FSC plywood (Forest Stewardship Council)
120x 92cm
P.O.A
Tasting Notes
“It is a natural human instinct to turn our fears into symbols, and destroy the symbols, in the hope that it will destroy the fear. It is a logic that keeps recurring throughout human history, from the Crusades to the witch hunts to the present day.”
Johann Hari, ‘Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs’
Premium refined sweetness…sugar, the reason the pope allowed slavery, the reason rum exists, also a factor behind at least one outbreak of witch trials, it is not an economically viable opinion to challenge the sanctity of sweet tasting sugar.
The sacred union of product utility and idol, simple, common, mass-produced marvel… popular democracy of pop consumption.
The brute caricature portrays black men as innately savage, destructive predators who target helpless victims, especially white women.
Nothing sells like sex sells and sex sells everything.
Perspective is a function of narrative; narrative is a result of popular belief.
Oil stained, black monsters the myth becomes worldview.
We are conditioned to emotionally respond, constantly bombarded by stimulus that is surgically designed to elicit simple emotive response, endless marketing and advertising.
Panopticon is a jail where inmate’s behaviour is regulated by the threat of constant surveillance through building design.
This work is a response to my viewing pop art in new york … dots on plywood mimic the spread of dots and half tone dots in commercial screen-printing, and the web of interconnected nodes imposed by the inescapable media machine
Propaganda of the Deed
1998- 2020
mixed media paint, stencil, resin oil paint on canvas
86x 118cm
P.O.A
Tasting Notes
If one needs to be busy to be happy… then one isn’t truly happy.
This is a busy painting, a psychological landscape, heavily layered, it took a long time to build itself up, like an archaeological dig in reverse.
The canvas was from a squat on Ivy Street in Redfern, knocked down and left as a vacant lot as part of the pre Olympics ‘sweep the riff raff elsewhere’ policy all too similar to the ones that brought ‘Australia’ into existence.
I started painting because I had to cook weekly specials, I understood complimentary colours, and was applying the same rules of aesthetics to flavours, I was painting bright coloured abstract expressionism over the top of framed canvas from the squat, initially it was as much about claiming the space as my own, laying down a layer of paint without allowing myself to be intimidated by brushes, as it was tuning the texture balance of heat and depth, fat and acid.
I discovered this tucked away in a corner of my mothers garage, hosed off the layer of grime from twenty years of storage and the final layer revealed itself and it became finished for the second time, only this time by me.
Propaganda of the deed (or propaganda by the deed) is specific political action meant to be exemplary to others and serve as a catalyst for revolution.
The concept, in a broader setting, has a rich heritage, as in the words of Mikhail Bakunin
“we must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda”
Junglist
2020
oil paint, spray paint and resin on stainless steel
P.O.A
Empty Mask, Empty Eyes
2020
mixed media paint, wood stain, smoke stain and resin on plywood
120x 80cm
P.O.A
Tasting Notes
“As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.”
― Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
The outlaw helmet is a symbolic façade, with the sky showing through, a nod to Sidney Nolan.
The dragons are all slain, the mythical connection dead, the wilderness consumed, the self-serving bias of the dominance hierarchy hold the reigns to progress.
Social dominance theory is a theory of intergroup relations that focuses on the maintenance and stability of group-based social hierarchies. According to the theory, group-based inequalities are maintained through three primary intergroup behaviours: institutional discrimination, aggregated individual discrimination, and behavioural asymmetry. The theory proposes that widely shared cultural ideologies (i.e., legitimizing myths) provide the moral and intellectual justification for these intergroup behaviours.
Who Gives a Duck
2020
mixed media paint on plywood
80x 120cm
P.O.A
Tasting Notes
A bright joyous combination of vibrant colours, a mix of spray paint, enamel gloss, metallic tint and acrylic on ethically sourced, plantation pine plywood. offers the idyllic vista for a faceless man in a suit to push a lawnmower after a pair of fleeing fluffy cute golden little ducklings.
Imperial privilege dictates, the wise man never loses face when cutting someone else’s grass… who gives an authentic imitation patent leather duck, when it looks this good.
“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” Kate Moss
Life In Rear View Mirror
2022
mixed media, oil paint, spray paint, white out correction pen and resin on recycled 2Pac Poly kitchen end panel
88x 52cm
P.O.A
Death Of Socrates
part two
2020
mixed media; woodstain, spraypaint, metallic tint, oil paint, smoke stain and resin on FSC plywood (Forest Stewardship Council)
95x 120cm
P.O.A
Ode to the Princely Bin Chicken
2020
mixed media paint, wood stain, smoke stain and resin on plywood
80x 120cm
P.O.A
Tasting Notes
This painting is titled after an episode of ‘the Blindboy podcast’ which was recorded in the Sydney Royal Botanical Gardens. I had originally thought to call it “drive through fried chicken”.
The band, ‘Happy Monday’s,’ code word for heroin was ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken’.
The lead singer allegedly walked out of a meeting with EMI in 1994, as they were about to sign a £1.7million contract, telling executives he was “going for KFC” and would be back soon. He never returned and the deal fell through.
Visually this image is a playful exploration of the chaos in confinement; pink, blue, green and smoke stains behind vivid white.
The seriousness of a police officer in full riot gear swinging a club, whilst the only disturbance is the swagger of an ibis, the violence is disarmingly easy to mistake.
It is a social commentary of feather weight punk pop symbolism atop phantom weight abstract expressionism.
In the context of society slipping away from the ideals of ‘the enlightenment’, with popular leaders who deny climate change and openly hold religious beliefs with the scientific merit of flat earthers, police banning hip hop gigs and fake news… going for KFC and a giggle seems like a reasonable response to me.
Imposter Syndrome
2018
mixed media paint, smoke stains and resin on masonite signage board framed with skirting timber off cuts
60x 89cm
P.O.A
Tasting Notes;
As a boy I was sent to the same school my father had attended, an ‘all male’ affair governed by an institution of pedophiles with religious immunity from the law.
Friday boys would dress in army uniforms, shiny brass buckles, three finger folds on shirt sleeves, berets and mirror polished boots
They would have uniform inspections and march in tight formations carrying guns around in loud percussive circles, sporadic shouting with well clipped social control and pomp.
In my fathers day, it was exactly the same, only the guns where functional.
The boots, steel toe with the same mirror polish finish were allegedly bullet proof.
Kerry Santry made a bet to prove it.
No one thought to test, the bullet proof theory, without having a foot in at the same time.
Santry shot himself in the foot, losing a toe or two to boot.
Since the invention of the automatic machine gun and arguably even before that with the invention of the self repeating rifle… marching in tight formations has been a disastrously silly idea.
I’m told there are fewer pedophiles at the school nowadays, if I were to shoot myself in the foot, and make a bet, I’d say its probably still a boys club who dress up in uniforms and march in noisy circles in tight formation though.
Dipstick beach pattern
Diptych
2018
mixed media paint and resin on concrete form board
2@ 60x 60cm
P.O.A
Tasting Notes;
This work is based on
'Australian beach pattern'
1940
by Charles Meere
which I always found creepy as fuck, it honestly looks to me like Nazi propaganda through the lens of some old white stuck up Aussie dickhead... hopefully im wrong.
Panopticon refers to a jail design, in which ‘the inmate’ regulates behaviour in response to the potential of constant surveillance.
The work questions the reproduction of patterns and identity within the framework of social constraints.
The working title was ‘Colonial Stockholm Syndrome in Panopticon’
The prevailing pattern is from the protective embrace of bubble wrap stamped down with paint... id hate to offend anyones delicate sensibilities calling out a national treasure as bullshit.